


Past treatment

by imsfire



Series: Paths of hurt and darkness [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Illness, warning for planned suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 15:24:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9826328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: She has far more serious things to fill her time with than fussing over a cold.





	

She’s never ill.  It’s just a fact of her life.  Minor injuries, you fight on with them or walk them off, coughs and aches and sniffles you ignore.  Anything worse, doesn’t happen; or, it happens and you die.  Jyn is still alive because she never gets wounded past walking it off, never gets sick past ignoring it.

So when she starts to cough every day, and her lungs seem to burn the inside of her ribs, she ignores it.  She has far more serious things to fill her time with than fussing over a cold. 

She’s making good progress on her training; she should be a qualified pilot by the end of the year.  When the planned move to Hoth takes place she could be flying unsupervised.  She might even get to co-pilot with Bodhi.  And when she gets to Hoth she’ll see Cassian again.  She can’t afford to have a cold when she has work to do.  Anyway, their next home is a fucking ice-planet; and she is going there if it kills her.  She’s going to live on the ice, with Cassian.  Her future is only just beginning.

The chest pain is bearable if she ignores it, and Jyn is very, very used to ignoring pain, to making herself find things bearable.  When the cough is joined by a constant ache in her lower back she ignores that too.  When her monthly cycle becomes erratic she’s more irritated than anything.  She’s always been regular as a chrono.  Her body is just being stupid.

She takes a basic urine test to be sure she isn’t pregnant; and with that confirmed, goes back to walking it off.

A month before the base move, she’s on her way to the gymnasium in Pyramid 5 when something in her gut seems to unravel and tear.  She puts a hand to her abdomen, startled, then halts, stunned by the second wave of pain.  Manages to take two more steps and stumbles, starting to cough as nerves shoot into one another, all her pain triggers cascading.  Her legs have stopped moving altogether as if they no longer believe in the act of movement, and she topples to the floor of the passageway and blacks out, incredulous even as the world goes dark.

She comes to in the med-centre, and a cheerless droid tells her that her cancer has metastasised.

She had no idea she had cancer, and already it’s past treatment.

Three months later, on the frozen world where all her brief future was waiting, she finds herself asking Cassian “Please, help me to die.”  She thought she knew pain, but this is still worse, because she cannot ignore his as she would her own, cannot walk it off or pretend it is something she will bear.  He is the one who must bear it, and she is the one making him.  She would have given anything to avoid hurting him so much.  But there’s no-one else she can turn to.

“Please, Cassian.  Please.  Help me die.”


End file.
